Quotes (3)

Why do we fall, Master Wayne? So we might learn to pick ourselves up. — Alfred Pennyworth, in Batman Begins.

There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. — Bill Gates, October 23, 1995 (see the humorous FOCUS Magazine Interview with Bill Gates)

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. — Isaac Asimov

Mathematics is a cruel profession. Solving a mathematical problem is for most mathematicians an arduous and lengthy process which may take years, even a lifetime. The final conquest of the truth comes, if ever, inevitably tinged with disillusion, soured by the realization of the ultimate irrelevance of all intellectual endeavor. — Gian-Carlo Rota

The Germans have aptly called Sitzfleisch the ability to spend endless hours at a desk doing grueling work. Sitzfleisch is considered by mathematicians to be a better guage of success than any of the attractive definitions of talent with which psychologists regale us from time to time. — Gian-Carlo Rota

(Thus) every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite. — Aristotle

Always try the problem that matters most to you. — Sir Andrew Wiles

My abacus doesn’t have a modem. — Whitehouse spokesman Michael McCurry, when asked if he had ever surfed the Web

There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else — but persistent. — Raul Bott